I agree with you I don’t like Rand’s atheism but her philosophy is right on the mark.You don’t need to read the book. Just read Natemans passage from Atlas and you will see that she is right.
I read all of Anthem, We The Living, and Atlas Shrugged. Finally, in the middle of The Fountainhead, I had had enough and put it down forever. Laisez Faire Capitalism is not “her” philosophy. She is a champion of it, but Milton Fried, Rush Limbaugh and Wm. F. Buckley are better champions by far. And it is good on paper, but you do need to hybridize it somewhat. All by itself it lacks key ingredients that are required by Judaeo-Christian ethics, and would quickly resemble a Dickens novel, or the small-minded demands of Shylocke that a contract be fulfilled to the letter, up to and including a pound of human flesh.
Balancing that hybridization while avoiding the abyss of socialism is not only ethical, but a matter of survival for an enlightened industrial society. Pollution is bad, but does not justify the insanity of environ-mental-ists shutting down all fossil fuels or outlawing plastic straws. Starving people cannot work productively or buy enough to be called consumers. But that does not justify giving corrupt unionists a strangle-hold on all industry. It’s in the interests of employers to pay their workers enough so that they can buy the products they make, such as cars and houses, and still have enough to eat. Collective bargaining might or might not be a part of arriving at the right wage for each industry, depending on the situation. It might kill off employment, too.
Ayn Rand believed in the triumph of reason, but that’s hardly “her” philosophy, either. Ancient Greeks and medieval Talmudic scholars had similar beliefs.